Coral Gardeners – Revive Coral Reefs through Reforestation

Titouan Bernicot grew up on Moorea, the sister island of Tahiti. Almost all people in Moorea are fishermen, surfers or divers. The population is witnessing every day, how the coral reefs deteriorate. In 2017 – Titouan was 18 at the time – he took action and founded Coral Gardeners. The mission is three-fold: 

• Awareness: Making people all over the world aware of the beauty of coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean, and the importance of rescuing them
• Restoration: Identifying local corals which are adopted to the climate conditions, propagate them in a seawater nursery and plant then to restore reefs which are degraded
• Innovation: Teaming-up with experts around the globe to further refine the techniques and to employ state-of-the art technology for monitoring and mapping environmental data, including biodiversity

What started as an action of a small group of friends has grown into a global movement supported by more than half a million people. To date, the group has planted over 30,000 corals around the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. The aim is to scale to one million by 2025 and to empower communities across the globe to engage themselves. One strength of Coral Gardeners is their power to build a movement, among others by engaging corporates to allocate a percentage of their sales to this cause.